A planned luxury development and golf course threaten to destroy the hidden Gateway Valley, a critical 1,000-acre grass and woodlands section of the wildlife corridor of the East Bay hills. Public outcry and the permit process have stalled this destruction for over ten years. Now the developer has bought the adjacent cattle ranch and is renewing the pressure to build on this irreplaceable home of endangered species and unique wetlands. Critical hearings are slated for October 22, 2001. (2003 NOTE: Those hearings led to a new plan without golf, but the luxury homes are still planned!)

A Special Place

From Brookside Drive, just off Moraga Way in Orinda, Gateway Valley rises steeply - twelve hundred feet in just over a mile - to Round Top, a distinctive volcanic peak visible from around the San Francisco Bay. The valley's curving slopes are covered by open pastures of winter green or summer gold grasses and dark clusters of live oak and bay trees. But most remarkable are the wetlands: 2 perennial creeks, and fifty seeps and springs dotting the slopes, a rare and valuable resource in the region's dry Mediterranean climate. Home to cattle ranches for more than a century, the valley also shelters many wild animals, including native trout, bobcats, coyotes, golden eagles, and more than 70 other species of birds. It has recently been designated as critical habitat for the endangered Alameda whipsnake, a slender, fast-moving lizard-hunter, and it harbors rare populations of the threatened California red-legged frog.

The Proposed Golf Course Extravaganza

The developers want to bulldoze and fill this steep valley in order to make its topography flat enough for an 18-hole golf course, a swim and tennis club, a driving range, and 225 luxury homes. They want to destroy acres of wetlands and thousands of mature trees. They want to bury over four miles of perennial creeks under three to five stories of landfill or relegate them to the bottom of manmade trenches next to the fill. Much of the crucial wildlife habitat would be ravaged. And the natural beauty of the curving hills would be replaced by a generic, artificial landscape that would increase pollution and congestion in the surrounding communities. The developers, who withdrew their application several years ago when faced with severe criticism from government agencies and the public, are now intent on pushing through a slightly modified version.

Neighbors Worry

Residents of Orinda and neighboring communities are concerned about the region's water quality. The golf course would dump toxic pesticides and fertilizers into Brookside Creek and Moraga Creek, and from there into two of the region's fresh-water reservoirs. Demand for water would increase in an area highly susceptible to drought. Massive alterations of creeks in steep, unstable terrain would have unpredictable and possibly disastrous effects on flood control. Inhabitants of the historic community of Canyon, located on the other side of the same hills, are concerned that the springs and wells which are their only source of fresh water may be depleted or polluted as a result of the proposed development. Commuters on Highway 24 and Moraga Way have reason to dread the addition of hundreds of rides per day that the development would bring to these already severely congested roads. And residents of the Oakland and Berkeley hills worry that the development would greatly increase potential sources of accidental fires and limit opportunities for controlled burns (not necessarily harmful to wildlife populations but valuable for wildfire control) in an area less than a mile from the zone devastated by the firestorm of 1991.

Open Space: A Vital Link

Gateway Valley is more than a unique ecosystem in its own right and an area of concern for neighboring communities, it is also part of a bigger picture. Immediately adjacent to the narrow corridor over the top of Highway 24's Caldecott Tunnel, it forms a vital link in the greenbelt between the Tilden and Briones Parks in the north and the San Leandro watershed and Las Trampas Wilderness in the south - a link not only for wild animals and native plants whose survival depends on open territory, but also for humans contemplating and enjoying the landscape that is one of the Bay Area's greatest treasures. The greenbelt also provides a buffer separating the continuous urban fabric of the bayside cities from the rapidly expanding suburban matrix of central Contra Costa Country. The proposed development would dramatically reduce that buffer right at its narrowest spot.

Who Will Decide?

Public outcry and the permit process have stalled this project for over ten years. The citizens of Orinda voted against an earlier version of the project, and various government agencies have repeatedly recommended against it and criticized its inadequate planning and failure to explore alternatives. Although the development cannot procede without permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, these agencies' powers are limited in the face of big money and political pressure. The only public entity to approve the project, the City of Orinda, has been severely compromised by the developers' gift of millions of dollars for the city coffers and by their threat of a lawsuit if the project is not permitted (which suggests just how much of a gift that money really was). The developers have shown themselves profoundly insensitive to local history by destroying the old Boeger Ranch buildings, after they had been recommended for designation as historic monuments. But these outrages should not blind us to the bigger question of whether this type of development is what Orinda and the Bay Area need. We have a glut of luxury homes, while we suffer from acute congestion and a grave shortage of affordable dwellings.

Alternatives

The size of the land (over 900 acres), its environmental and historical significance, and its adjacency to existing parklands make it an ideal candidate for a park or wildlife preserve. Parts of the valley were included in the original, visionary proposal for the East Bay Regional Park District of 1930, the first of its kind in the nation. Smaller homes, without the golf course and country club, but carefully situated on the edge of a unique and beautiful natural landscape, would be extremely desirable and would have much less harmful impact. These options deserve to be explored!

Research courtesy of the Greenbelt Guardians, an information network and coalition of groups and individuals dedicated to effectively preserving open space in the hills east of Berkeley and Oakland and west of Orinda and Moraga. To find out more, contact us at P.O. Box 14, Canyon, CA 94516, e-mail: info@savegateway.org, or visit us on the web at www.savegateway.org

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